


All In

by shewho



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Backstory, M/M, Pre-Movie, The Drift (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 14:20:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/901281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewho/pseuds/shewho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raleigh contemplates what it would be like to not have Yancy in his head anymore now that he's been there.</p>
<p>Pre-movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All In

                In Ranger training, they were taught that they had better go all in on everything they did or they’d do it again.

                And again.

                And again.

                Until they did it up to whoever-was-in-charge-of-them-that-day’s standards. He and Yance had spent three, four, five hours doing a single circuit in training because some cadet kept fucking up. This mentality beat into the cadets real quick the benefits of doing something until they could do it right, creating correct muscle memory, etc. They were told early on that there was nothing in the world like learning to be a pilot with their instructor teaching you. He would make them hate him, and themselves, and literally everyone else. Everyone except their co-pilot. He demanded perfection to the highest degree. But if that was what it took to be the best of the best, well then _of course_.

                It was a tale as old as dirt and all the cadets knew it by heart: break them down to build them up. They sure did a hell of a good job breaking them down. Breaking them until they were nothing, nothing but a mind locked in the Drift. But sometimes they were so broken that no one could put them back together, least of all a screaming fucking maniac. Credit where credit was due, the man knew how to get the best out of his pilots—even if he destroyed some (most) of them in the process. For every Jaeger pilot, every team that grew to fame, there were at least three or four hundred failures. There were former pilots stuck in knee braces, ankle braces, back braces because their spines or ligaments or bones were so utterly destroyed by too-intense training or—more frequently—kaiju. There were men and women just completely worn out by the intensive fighting and horror they saw that they came out of it mentally blank, unable to ever re-enter the Drift without killing themselves and their co-pilot, which to Raleigh looked even more painful than a deformed spine or a fucked-up arm.

                He didn’t know what the fuck he’d ever do if he couldn’t Drift with Yance anymore. Having his brother inside his head was a little like having his most annoying qualities reflected back and being forced to stand next to them forever, but he figured that without Yance crawling into the corners of his brain—“All in, all the way, kiddo”—the silence alone would probably kill him.


End file.
